Attacking the clones: indie game devs fight blatant rip-offs

Clones of games are causing trouble not only for developers, but for an unwary …

Vlambeer's Rami Ismail and Jan Willem Nijam are getting a little tired of the industry's seemingly endless discussions about how so-called "clones" are ruining the industry. That's not because it's not an important subject, or because clones are actually harmless, but because the discussion is "kind of dead" they said.

"Even though a lot of words are said, nothing is really said," Ismail said at a presentation at the Game Developers Conference this week. The two-person indie development team, best known for titles like Super Crate Box, has been directly impacted by cloning—their iOS port of Radical Fishing was copied almost completely wholesale by Gamenauts' Ninja Fishing before the former could even hit the App Store.

With their GDC presentation, Vlambeer tried to move the cloning discussion forward by dismantling some of the less-logical arguments in favor of the practice and by offering some solutions to help mitigate cloning's effects on the industry.

Not all clones are created equal, Vlambeer said. Though all first-person shooters were at one point widely considered "Doom clones," Nijam pointed out that Duke Nukem 3D actually adds quite a bit to the Doom formula from a pure gameplay standpoint. The clones Vlambeer are concerned with are those that steal the entire set of gameplay solutions that another developer has come up with without being at all concerned with the game design problems those developers struggled with.

In their presentation, Vlambeer identified a number of logical fallacies in arguments surrounding the cloning debate. One such argument posits that game clones enable the iteration necessary to move the industry forward, an argument Ismail called "one of the weirdest things I've ever heard. Let's just make the exact same thing and that will improve stuff?"

To others that argue simple games are bound to be cloned just by dint of being so simple, Nijam gave an emphatic "Fuck you! I don't want anyone to tell me what kind of game I'm going to make… letting clones limit us is horrible, and if we ever get to that point just shoot me."

The pair acknowledged that protecting game designs with patents might actually damage innovation, but argued that this sort of legal protection is separate from the issue of whether game cloning is helpful or harmful to the industry. And make no mistake, clones are hurting the industry, Nijam said, both by diverting skilled developers towards work on soulless copies and demotivating skilled developers who put a lot of effort into truly original games.

What's worse, a preponderance of low-quality clones is training consumers to expect a lack of originality in the industry, Nijam said, a loss of "gaming literacy" that drags the whole industry down. "Players will get all those bad games and stop recognizing actual good games," he said. "If you only eat bad hamburgers, you're not going to recognize a good hamburger."

The natural reaction to this kind of rampant cloning among many developers might be to hold their cards close to the vest, keeping a new idea totally secret until dropping it on an unsuspecting public. But Ismail said the solution to the cloning problem is actually the opposite—educating gamers by developing games out in the open and showing them the real work that goes into an original design. Detailed development blogs, documentaries like Indie Game: The Movie, and websites that dig deep into game design process all help improve gaming literacy among the public and build a foundation for an audience that values original games.

"We shouldn't attack cloning; we can't take it down, it's too big," Ismail said. "What we should do is make it irrelevant. Instead of trying to take them down, try to make what we do more relevant… We should be talking about this stuff."

Kinda reminds me of the issues with the automotive performance aftermarket... the real innovators are ripped off so much and so often by people that just ship the original part to China to be duplicated, that they just give up. It's almost to a point where you can't even buy good parts if you want to. Kinda sad, but like is said above, what do you do about it?

"We shouldn't attack cloning; we can't take it down, it's too big," Ismail said. "What we should do is make it irrelevant. Instead of trying to take them down, try to make what we do more relevant… We should be talking about this stuff."

The article does actually mention that he's not talking about games which modify previous ideas (adding unlockable weapons in this example), he's talking about games which just switch out the graphics and keep the same gameplay

The article does actually mention that he's not talking about games which modify previous ideas (adding unlockable weapons in this example), he's talking about games which just switch out the graphics and keep the same gameplay

Zynga would be a prime example of this. They have big money behind them and are happy to rip off the ideas of other game developers to suit their own ends.

"Players will get all those bad games and stop recognizing actual good games," he said. "If you only eat bad hamburgers, you're not going to recognize a good hamburger."

A game is only good if its players think it is good. If they play a lot of bad games and then play a good game, they will recognize that it is good because they enjoy playing it more, not because some random indie developers say so.

I am sorry but I have to agree that a clone is not a clone unless it is the exact same game with a different set of wallpaper. All games that are released today are copies of other great games some even use the same game engine but nobody is claiming that nobody should be allowed to make a first person shooter because doom got there first or an mmo because wow is the mmo. I have been saying for a while that there are no new games but I cant help feeling that its not cloning thats the problem its a lack of creativity in the games making marketplace. I mean would you risk millions on a new game when you can update an old one with virtually no risk as lots of gamers will buy it.

It's terrible that someone ripped off your game before you could even sell it. There should be a strong legal system and Apple should be more proactive.

But, welcome to the dollar store. Gaming is evolving. Ever go to Latin America? 6 years ago, every village had a street kiosk full of ripped DVDs. This is what the democratization of technology looks like. Now everyone can make or copy a game and make money on it by changing the word in a title or knowing the right people.

I would basically say to these folks the same thing i would say to those who cry about piracy; concentrate on your customers and your software. This notion of people only eating bad hamburgers is ridiculous when injected into a discussion of gaming. There has always been a steady flow of god awful garbage games. Long ago people learned to sift thru the muck and find games that appeal to them. No one is looking at these shitty games and saying 'video games all suck'.

Stop crying, make a better product, and reap the rewards. Indie games have been proving their viability in the market place recently, have given back to the community that supports them, and as long as they release products that gamers like at reasonable prices they will continue to rake in the cash. Indie publishers need to steer clear from acting like traditional software companies. Suing clone makers, talking about patents, all of that... the gaming community may very well turn on you. So yeah, attack the clones if you want to be seen as a hate mongering money grubbing tool who uses the legal system when his product cant compete...

Either the article is doing a poor job of representing their arguments, or I think they've done more harm to their position than good. There are plenty of good arguments against pure clones, but it doesn't seem that these devs have made any of them.

To others that argue simplegames are bound to be clonedjust by dint of being so simple,Nijam gave an emphatic "Fuckyou! I don't want anyone to tellme what kind of game I'm goingto make… letting clones limit usis horrible, and if we ever get tothat point just shoot me."

I partially agree -- copyright is out of hand, and patents in some categories don't make sense -- this line of logic is incredibly dangerous. In a society as interconnected as ours where no single person can mass produce a product a great idea must be proposed and shared with other that have the capacity (money) to produce.

Started his proposal with, "I have something AWESOME and NEW but I can't tell you or show you until you pay me TEN MILLION DOLLARS and sign this CONTRACT!"

Patent his idea so that he could license or sell his invention to the firms that can obviously see how it will improve their products?

Ideas have value, knowledge has value. An individual with the required knowledge set to come up with a novel idea should be compensated. It cost money to GET that knowledge.

If all "ideas should not be treated as property", how is a designer, inventor, consultant, or any other professional that doesn't physically shape a material into a final product with their hands supposed to make a living?

Copyright may be unreasonable as currently applied, but let's be careful about how far we let the pendulum swing the other direction.

It really bothers me how people constantly describe Doom as the first FPS game. Doom was a Wolfenstein 3D clone.

Ultima Underworld predates them both and had arguably a more impressive 3D engine.

A "clone" made by the same company, with a vastly more powerful engine, totally different setting, and this new thing called 'deathmatch'... Doom wasn't the first to do any of the things it did, but it was the first to make it popular.

Ideas have value, knowledge has value. An individual with the required knowledge set to come up with a novel idea should be compensated. It cost money to GET that knowledge.

If all "ideas should not be treated as property", how is a designer, inventor, consultant, or any other professional that doesn't physically shape a material into a final product with their hands supposed to make a living?

I agree with you, but your words will fall on deaf ears here. You've already heard the platitudes in the comments above:1. "concentrate on your customers"2. "make a better product"3. ????4. "reap the rewards"

The theft-supporters will argue that the original product/idea/artwork will rise above the crowd of copycats and knockoffs. But they fail to acknowledge that that generally only happens due to the other activity they loathe so much: marketing.

Nothing wrong with clones that no one pays for and where it is obvious which is the original. The real problem is that people still have to pay for access to these games instead of funding the development of them. As long as there is an opportunity for scumbags like Zynga to deceive people by selling them a clone we'll have this problem. Any payment system that isn't providing funding for people to make things or a voluntary reward/donation for things that have been made is very vulnerable to parasites.

Started his proposal with, "I have something AWESOME and NEW but I can't tell you or show you until you pay me TEN MILLION DOLLARS and sign this CONTRACT!"

Yep.

Although, forget about the contract part - no one would sign. Just walk into the office of a car maker and show them your design. Ask them to pay you a hefty reward fee or you'll tell their competitors. Their reward is a short period of time where they can upgrade their production lines and car designs - when they are made public and start to be sold, their competitors will have scramble to catch up - the classic first mover advantage.

Would it work? Yes, in a competitive market. Would it have worked back then in the car market? Probably not. Then again, there were only a few car manufacturers - largely since patent law favours a small number of companies locking everyone else out. Still, with the focus on quarterly earnings we see today, such an approach would meet with more success.

Just look at the new technologies - particularly tablets. Much has been said about Apple's patent advantages over Android, but the practical effect has been very small - a few models of tablet being questioned, only a few withdrawn from sale. Add to that - Apple has no patent advantage over MS at all, due to long-standing cross-licensing. Yet, the iPad rules all - even without having to obey Apple's patents, MS are nowhere. Even without adhering to Apple's patents, the Android OEM's are struggling. Apple, by creating the product in secret, launching it in a massive way and tying up huge chunks of the supply chain are dominating an industry without needing patents at all. The first mover advantage and the free market - simples.

Of course, patents will now allow Apple to retain dominance of the tablet market without having to innovate a great deal. Bit of a shame really - when they're trying to catch their opposition sleeping, they sure are a fearsomely competitive and innovative bunch!

Game clones have been around forever. Name one programmer over 30 who _hasn't_ cloned Asteroids or Pac-Man or Galaga^H^H^H^H^H^HSpace Invaders or Donkey Kong at some time in their life. Yet it's never done any harm. It has always been about first-to-market, and you can't clone something until after you have _seen_ it. By then it's either far too late to make a difference, or your clone is _better_ (i.e. not really a mere clone) and therefore improved the scene rather than harming it.

Maybe he, and all the other blowhards who think life owes them a wheelbarrow full of cash, should realize that in the grand scheme of things, especially in the context of a fully operational automobile, it's _not_ that big of an idea. It's a nice convenience, yes, but not an earth shattering invention.

You want a good metric for measure true invention? Tell a room full of engineers your idea and see how long it takes them to clone it without your help. This immediately invalidates all sorts of nonsense software patents because the whole point of software patent lawsuits is that the ideas have been "copied" sight-unseen, otherwise it would be copyright infringement.

Example: tell the room full about intermittent wiper; they all say "good idea, I can make that work!"tell the room full that you have a 100% working flying car that runs on water, they all say "how the hell did you do that?" Then you've got an invention on your hands.

ClownRazer wrote:

Ideas have value, knowledge has value. An individual with the required knowledge set to come up with a novel idea should be compensated.

...

If all "ideas should not be treated as property", how is a designer, inventor, consultant, or any other professional that doesn't physically shape a material into a final product with their hands supposed to make a living?

Cry me a river. I get paid IF and WHEN I show up to work and get shit done. Everyone else can do the same. The problem with all of these over-extended copyright and patent terms is that everyone is trying to get paid perpetually for work they did in the past. Make something new.

ClownRazer wrote:

Zynga is disgusting.

You either believe in the Free Market or you don't. By all means, repeat this sentiment early and often in order to influence the market. But don't say this to influence laws to screw up the market even further.

The same should apply to other areas as well. (I'm looking at you Apple with your "minimalilst designs" and pathetic UI "interactions")

There's a big different between a general concept and a detailed system of interactions. Things like swipe to unlock and pinch to zoom are general concepts that even without prior examples someone reasonable could have come up with on their own. They should certainly not be treated as property. Copying the EXACT system of interaction that make up the core of your product from someone else, I'd call that stealing. It's quite common in mobile gaming and it's preventing some innovative developers from making a worthwhile profit.

There is nothing new about this. Game cloning has been going on as long as there have been games. Even before computers, board and card games were often cloned. The speed at which computer games can be cloned with modern development tools and distributed via the internet is the only real difference.

What it really comes down to is if you don't want your successful idea cloned, then don't show it to anyone. If you want to show it to anyone you have to accept that someone else will copy what you have done. It is really just human nature.

Maybe he, and all the other blowhards who think life owes them a wheelbarrow full of cash, should realize that in the grand scheme of things, especially in the context of a fully operational automobile, it's _not_ that big of an idea. It's a nice convenience, yes, but not an earth shattering invention.[/quote]

The Kearns example was actually a very good one. It's not that he came up with something novel and someone took notice. It's that he saved a very profitable industry a ton of money with his invention that they blatantly and intentionally stole from him. The industry was trying to create a device and spending a lot of money on R&D and they got nowhere. He invented what they could not, and went to them in good faith to sell his invention to them, They turned him down and then used his invention anyway. That's not a free-market principal, it's downright theft.

Game clones have been around forever. Name one programmer over 30 who _hasn't_ cloned Asteroids or Pac-Man or Galaga^H^H^H^H^H^HSpace Invaders or Donkey Kong at some time in their life. Yet it's never done any harm. It has always been about first-to-market, and you can't clone something until after you have _seen_ it. By then it's either far too late to make a difference, or your clone is _better_ (i.e. not really a mere clone) and therefore improved the scene rather than harming it.

What makes it different is scale and rapidity of response. This is something that used to take months; now it's days.

Day 0 you have your game on the market. Within a week there is an identical clone. Within two weeks there are several such clones- all of which are selling for cheaper than yours.

Your options are approximately one: lower your price in response- thus getting penalized for being the first to market. You bear the costs of all the initial development and now your financial rewards for having done so are drastically reduced. (Note that I'm talking about 'true' clones here: copycat games released that update only the artwork/music, not the development house that reverse engineered your gameplay and reconstructed it. That still required an investment of time and money.)

The point of this rather disjointed article is that if you know ahead of time that you're going to be faced with the scenario above, your motivation for investing the time and money required to release a new game is severely reduced if not completely eliminated.

Worse than simple piracy, this is other people taking your product and actively making money off of it - money that would otherwise have gone to you. Without equivocation - sales of exact clones would equate to a significant portion of sales of the original had the clone not existed.

Maybe he, and all the other blowhards who think life owes them a wheelbarrow full of cash, should realize that in the grand scheme of things, especially in the context of a fully operational automobile, it's _not_ that big of an idea. It's a nice convenience, yes, but not an earth shattering invention.

The Kearns example was actually a very good one. It's not that he came up with something novel and someone took notice. It's that he saved a very profitable industry a ton of money with his invention that they blatantly and intentionally stole from him. The industry was trying to create a device and spending a lot of money on R&D and they got nowhere. He invented what they could not, and went to them in good faith to sell his invention to them, They turned him down and then used his invention anyway. That's not a free-market principal, it's downright theft.

Neither the linked article on him nor the article on intermittent wipers themselves mentions your version of the story at all. Sounds more like a Romance Novel than Reality. What do you do if your car came with a Tape player and you want a CD player? You can buy one. What do you do if your car has no alarm and you want one in it? You can buy one. Kearns could have sold his wipers directly to car owners. He would have had a first mover advantage. Also, car makers and dealerships themselves charge outrageously for extra features; so he probably would have had a price point advantage. __Those__ are free market principles. But maybe he just wanted to sit on his ass and rake in money while someone else took on all of the risks, that's the real American Dream.

"Even though a lot of words are said, nothing is really said," Ismail said at a presentation at the Game Developers Conference this week. The two-person indie development team, best known for titles like Super Crate Box, has been directly impacted by cloning—their iOS port of Radical Fishing was copied almost completely wholesale by Gamenauts' Ninja Fishing before the former could even hit the App Store.

This is pretty misleading, it makes it sound like ideas are being generated then ripped before a dollar can be made on them. In reality, Radical Fishing was around on the web for a year before Ninja Fishing came out. And Radical Fishing isn't an iOS game at all, it's sequel is, Ridiculous Fishing, which hadn't been announced when Ninja Fishing came out. So Gamenauts took a year old flash game and made a touch based iOS game out of it. Hardly going to win them friends, but hardly damaging

Plus I'm not entirely sure what "completely wholesale" is meant to mean, it sounds like it's an exact copy in every way. Graphically they look entirely different, pixel art vs a more cartoonish take. Gameplay? Radical Fishing wasn't a touch based game at all and a lot of elements from Fruit Ninja were taken too (slicing fish, avoiding bombs, etc). What they did do is steal a single mechanic from Radical Fishing, you pull as many fish up into the air as possible and kill them. I can't see why that should be anymore protected than the FPS mechanic of take a gun and shoot the bad guys.

I don't think the problem is as big as made out either. The barrier to entry on the market is tiny so it's expected every man and his dog will take a shot at it. And this will be what kills Zynga in the long run, they've got so much competition that generating the returns they require on each clone will be impossible. They generally get their clones out 6 months or more after the original and have to hope like hell they can capture a new market, but in reality Zynga is living off a small handful of games and throwing out everything they can to try get their next big hit. In the meantime, all the top selling games on iOS are originals, not clones, we're not so starved for originality that we don't recognize it anymore.

Day 0 you have your game on the market. Within a week there is an identical clone. Within two weeks there are several such clones- all of which are selling for cheaper than yours.

...

You bear the costs of all the initial development and now your financial rewards for having done so are drastically reduced. (Note that I'm talking about 'true' clones here: copycat games released that update only the artwork/music,

Day -1: maybe you should have done business with a respectable gaming platform that doesn't allow clones. Note that there will still be clones on other platforms, but you at least have your home platform all to yourself.

Day 15: you should file a copyright lawsuit against those "true" clones who stole your code. Wait? They didn't directly steal code, they just re-did all the work? Maybe you should stop belly aching how hard and novel your work was if it was so easy to reproduce.

Kearns could have sold his wipers directly to car owners. He would have had a first mover advantage. Also, car makers and dealerships themselves charge outrageously for extra features; so he probably would have had a price point advantage. __Those__ are free market principles. But maybe he just wanted to sit on his ass and rake in money while someone else took on all of the risks, that's the real American Dream.

Well said. Just because he first thought of an idea doesn't mean he should have exclusive use of that idea for all time. Besides those inventions that require long periods of examination to approve for sale (such as medicine, with it's requirements that all drugs be tested in stage 3 clinical trials to determine their efficacy and safety), the first mover advantage is more than enough to recoup most inventors costs. The guys who had their game cloned could have developed an iOS version alongside the originals if they wanted to - it's unsurprising that others have seen a gap in the market. Hell, half of all the Russian game knock-offs come about because Russian language localisation is not seen as important.

Patents were invented in a time when trades were closed to outsiders and tertiary education rare - something was needed to encourage innovation. These days you can have your finished product shipped from China months after manufacturing is first begun, and software can be developed entirely in secret and be launched globally and simultaneously in even less time. You simply don't need patents to make money or to encourage inventiveness. Indeed, it could be argued that we have an over-production of ideas, due to intellectual monopoly protection, and a shortage of good implementation.

Game clones have been around forever. Name one programmer over 30 who _hasn't_ cloned Asteroids or Pac-Man or Galaga^H^H^H^H^H^HSpace Invaders or Donkey Kong at some time in their life. Yet it's never done any harm. It has always been about first-to-market, and you can't clone something until after you have _seen_ it. By then it's either far too late to make a difference, or your clone is _better_ (i.e. not really a mere clone) and therefore improved the scene rather than harming it.

What makes it different is scale and rapidity of response. This is something that used to take months; now it's days.

Day 0 you have your game on the market. Within a week there is an identical clone. Within two weeks there are several such clones- all of which are selling for cheaper than yours.

Your options are approximately one: lower your price in response- thus getting penalized for being the first to market. You bear the costs of all the initial development and now your financial rewards for having done so are drastically reduced. (Note that I'm talking about 'true' clones here: copycat games released that update only the artwork/music, not the development house that reverse engineered your gameplay and reconstructed it. That still required an investment of time and money.)

The point of this rather disjointed article is that if you know ahead of time that you're going to be faced with the scenario above, your motivation for investing the time and money required to release a new game is severely reduced if not completely eliminated.

Worse than simple piracy, this is other people taking your product and actively making money off of it - money that would otherwise have gone to you. Without equivocation - sales of exact clones would equate to a significant portion of sales of the original had the clone not existed.

But there's the flipside: the consumers now have many games to choose from, for cheaper than it might have cost before. Sure, the games might be fundamentally the same, but there is real value to different skins put onto the same game. Having to tie one type of gameplay to exactly one specific aesthetic is too limiting.

And ultimately, intellectual property's purpose is to benefit the consumers. The original creators don't get to reap the profits they thought they would? Too bad; what matters is that consumers get more games for lower prices.

Kyle Orland / Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in Pittsburgh, PA.